Standing Committee G

[Sir Nicholas Winterton in the Chair]

Fire and Rescue Services Bill

Nicholas Winterton: I know that this afternoon's sitting will be useful and that we will make good progress.
Mr. Philip Hammond (Runnymede and Weybridge) (Con) rose—

Nicholas Winterton: Before we move on, I want to point out that that was not an expectation, but an instruction. Although the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. McCabe) was in the middle of an intervention, there is now a point of order from the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge (Mr. Hammond).

Philip Hammond: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. I hear your instruction, but good progress, like many things, is open to various definitions. At the start of this morning's sitting the Minister surprised me by referring to a letter and documents that he had circulated to all members of the Committee, and I indicated that I had not received them. I have checked with my office and the document was e-mailed to me at 10.27 am by a civil servant from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister who would probably prefer to remain nameless. Therefore, I had not had a chance to scrutinise the documents and I assume that as the names of other members of the Committee were on the ''send'' list, they were in a similar position. Will the Minister ensure that other documents required during the Committee are circulated in time for hon. Members to see them before the sitting starts?

Nicholas Winterton: I can only say that it is not a matter for me, so it is not really a point of order. I am sure that the Minister will have heard the hon. Gentleman and will provide an explanation.

Nick Raynsford: Further to that point of order, Sir Nicholas. I hope that that did not apply to every member of the Committee. When I spoke to you yesterday evening, Sir Nicholas, in the Programming Sub-Committee, I said that I had addressed the missive to your colleague, Mr. O'Hara, who I assumed would Chair the sitting, and I assumed that the letter was sent out. I will make inquiries with my officials, but it was my understanding that the letter was issued yesterday to reach the Chair and the members of the Committee well in advance of today's sittings. However, I will certainly investigate that.

Nicholas Winterton: I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. I do not wish the matter to be protracted. I am sure that the Minister will try to ensure that every
 member of the Committee receives relevant documents relating to the Bill or to a particular sitting of the Committee. I now ask the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green to complete his intervention from earlier today.

Clause 2 - Power to create combined fire and rescue authorities

Amendment proposed [this day]: No. 9, in 
clause 2, page 2, line 12, leave out from 'area' to end of line 14.—[Mr. Hammond.] 
 Question again proposed, That the amendment be made.

Nicholas Winterton: I remind the Committee that with this we are discussing the following amendments: No. 1, in
clause 2, page 2, line 14, at end insert— 
 'Subject to a review of the boundaries by the Boundary Committee for England which shall take place before April 2005.'. 
No. 12, in 
clause 2, page 2, line 39, leave out subsection (9). 
No. 14, in 
clause 2, page 3, line 1, leave out subsection (10).

Stephen McCabe: Herein lies what we might describe as a continuity problem. I was suggesting before the interval that we were witnessing something fascinating. The benefit of a three-hour interval means that I have had an opportunity to reflect on my use of hyperbole. None the less, I was suggesting to the hon. Member for Teignbridge (Richard Younger-Ross) that we are witnessing something interesting in terms of his views, and those of his Liberal Democrat colleague the hon. Member for Southport (Dr. Pugh), on regional and localised participation. That is confused, because they do not differentiate between primary and secondary mandate in some situations.
 The real point that I want to put to the hon. Member for Teignbridge is that the Bill is about modernising the fire and rescue services. Has he had letters from constituents saying that when they are in need of the service, they are concerned about the administrative organisation under which the service is provided? If so, how many? Surely we are trying to provide a modern fire service that is fit for use, effective and efficient. That is the meat of the Bill, and that is what the Committee should be concerned with.

Richard Younger-Ross: I am glad that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green has had a good three hours to complete his intervention: it must go down as one of the longest interventions.

Nicholas Winterton: Order. I am the judge of the length of interventions. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman was not showing any disrespect to the Chair.

Richard Younger-Ross: Heaven forbid, Sir Nicholas.
 My response will not be as long. The hon. Gentleman referred to regional policy and asked what concerns have been expressed to me. I cannot give him a count, but a number of concerns have been expressed to me. Even in the context of this debate, I have heard from constituents who are concerned about regionalisation, and a region that stretches all the way from Land's End almost to the west midlands.

Philip Hammond: It just occurs to me to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he thought it rather odd that the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green was intervening in the way that he did in order to suggest that our constituents are not interested in the mechanisms behind public service delivery. I was going to invite the hon. Member for Teignbridge to ask the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green why he thinks that so many of his colleagues felt compelled to vote against their own Government on the issue of foundation hospitals, which is surely an issue of the organisational structure—

Nicholas Winterton: Order. I am extremely liberal, but I suggest that the hon. Gentleman does not respond to that question.

Richard Younger-Ross: Thank you, Sir Nicholas. I hear exactly what you say and I shall follow your instructions.
 The issues greatly concern my constituents. At lunchtime, I was dealing with an e-mail from a lady in Newton Abbot about regional assemblies. She thought that she had heard a BBC reporter saying that we already had regional assemblies, and I had to write back to her to say, ''I know that the Government can spin and move things fast, but even the ODPM cannot move that fast to create those bodies.'' There is a genuine concern on the matter.

Hugo Swire: Just for the purposes of accuracy, with regard to the communications between the hon. Gentleman and his constituent, he should be aware that we do have a regional assembly but it is unelected: it sits in Taunton with 80 employees.

Richard Younger-Ross: I am aware of the body that already exists, but my constituent thought that the reporter was referring to the elected regional assembly rather than what was the regional conference and all the other existing bodies.

Adrian Flook: The secretariat is based, sadly, in Taunton; the unelected regional assembly, sadly, meets in Exeter.

Richard Younger-Ross: I am amazed that the hon. Gentleman is sad that jobs have been created in his constituency.

Adrian Flook: At taxpayers' expense.

Richard Younger-Ross: It is still local employment. I suspect that you, Sir Nicholas, will soon stop us wandering away from the subject of the clause. I
 appreciate that we want to make progress this afternoon, so I shall not delay the Committee any longer on this clause.
Mr. Raynsford rose—

Nicholas Winterton: I almost put the question, but I now call the Minister.

Nick Raynsford: I was remiss, Sir Nicholas, in not rising quickly enough.

Philip Hammond: The Minister was asleep.

Nick Raynsford: I was not asleep. I was reading a relevant section from a fire and rescue document. I shall come to the point under consideration.
 Unlike amendment No. 4, which we debated before lunch, amendment No. 9 would not stop the combination of fire and rescue authorities where it would promote the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the fire authorities concerned. However, it would stop any move to a regional structure for specific public safety reasons—above all, civil resilience. As I said about amendment No. 4, we must deal with the possibility that a regional management board might not succeed, perhaps because of differences between the authorities involved in reaching agreement on a vital matter of public safety, such as the establishment of a regional control room. In such circumstances, we would need to take action to create a region-wide authority to ensure the necessary resilience in the interests of public safety.

Philip Hammond: The Minister said that the deletion of subsection (2)(b) could prevent the creation of a combined fire authority for reasons of enhancing public safety. I thought he said earlier that the term ''effectiveness'', which is used in subsection (2)(a) embraced public safety. I would therefore have thought that subsection (2)(a) could be used for those very purposes. Is the Minister now saying that effectiveness does not embrace the concept of public safety?

Nick Raynsford: No, I am not. I made it clear that my interpretation of effectiveness is, if I can remember my words precisely, that I could not imagine an effective fire service that did not ensure the enhancement of public safety. However, I believe that it is necessary to have the alternative definition to cope with circumstances such as those for dealing with emergencies or resilience needs that, sadly, are increasingly in the forefront of our minds and for which we have to plan on a sensible basis.
 I made it clear that the only circumstances in which we envisage clause 2(2)(b) being used were those in which there was a failure by authorities to work together to achieve the results through the regional management boards. It is a fail-safe option, but it is necessary to protect public safety. Amendment No. 9 would prevent that, and I cannot support it. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Philip Hammond: Will the Minister elaborate on the interaction between this part of the Bill and the Civil Contingencies Bill, as that is highly relevant?

Nick Raynsford: Once again, the hon. Gentleman has anticipated what I was going to do in the context of amendment No. 1, which is even more problematical than amendment No. 9. Amendment No. 1 would require the boundary committee to review the existing regional development agency boundaries before we could use the provisions of subsection (2)(b) to establish a regional combined fire and rescue authority. Hon. Members may be concerned that boundaries established for one purpose may not be suitable for all others, but since the RDA boundaries are the current basis for civil resilience, and each Government office has established regional resilience teams within those regions, modelled on the successful arrangements already in place in London, it makes sense to use them as the basis for regional planning.
 The Civil Contingencies Bill, as the hon. Gentleman said—

Richard Younger-Ross: Will there be a point at which the Minister's Department will consider looking at the RDA boundaries?

Nick Raynsford: I am potentially incurring your wrath, Sir Nicholas, in straying into this territory, but we have always said in a wider context that we could at a future date consider changes to boundaries. However, we made it clear that in the short term there was no logic in pursuing boundary changes as that would simply lead to protracted debate, argument and delay, and so prevent the opportunity for extending the option of regional government to those people who now will have the option because the Government have proceeded on the sensible basis of the existing regions.
 We have not precluded changes at a future date; we are moving ahead on a sensible and pragmatic basis and, as I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise, if we were to try to implement his proposal for a boundary committee review before anything else happened, it would put the kibosh on any prospect of rapid progress, either on elected regional assemblies or effective resilience because the need is here and now. 
 Part 2 of the Civil Contingencies Bill contains emergency planning powers that are based on the Government office boundaries. It introduces the concept of a regional co-ordinator who will typically be a senior police officer taking responsibility for co-ordination in that region. As I said, Government offices have already put in place regional resilience teams. 
 The experience of the last two and a bit years in London is that that regional basis for bringing together all the bodies that need to be involved is essential to ensuring effective resilience. That is why we have adopted a similar framework in rolling out the arrangements nationally.

Philip Hammond: London is surely a poor example because it has had a single fire and rescue authority for the whole Government office region for a long time. The Minister talked about the regional resilience structure that is in place and which will be reinforced by the Civil Contingencies Bill. Does not the regional management board structure that he wants to put in place for the fire service duplicate to a considerable extent the measure that is already there?

Nick Raynsford: No, this structure does not duplicate that measure. It ensures that there is effective regional co-ordination in those regions of the country that do not have regional organisation. London does, but the other English regions do not. It ensures that there will be effective regional co-ordination arrangements in all regions—apart from London—irrespective of the outcomes of the referendums that will take place this autumn on elected regional assemblies. That is the basis for the structure. It is a sensible and pragmatic way forward to ensure that there can be co-ordination of the fire service at regional level.
 The regional resilience arrangements are designed to bring together a much wider range of bodies, as has happened in London. Indeed, London is an extraordinarily good example of an area that has achieved successful cross-city working for resilience purposes and where a single fire and emergency planning authority, to give it its proper title, has ensured a cost-effective and efficient service. For example, in relation to joint control rooms, the hon. Gentleman will know from the Mott MacDonald evidence that the average cost of handling a call in London is some £18, compared with £168 on the Isle of Wight. Those are telling figures, and I hope that he will not minimise the importance of such considerations at a time when the public are rightly looking for value for money and do not want their council tax levels to be pushed up unreasonably. It ill behoves the hon. Gentleman to mock measures of cost-efficiency that ensure that the public get good value for money.

Philip Hammond: It ill behoves the Minister who administers the complex system of local government grant finance, which recognises the cost burden that sparsity imposes, to cite London against the Isle of Wight. If he is honest, he will recognise that it is inevitable that the cost per call in a metropolitan area such as London will be lower.

Nick Raynsford: I hesitate to go too far down this road, because you will undoubtedly reprimand me if I do so, Sir Nicholas, but I cannot fail to observe that London has by far and away the best figures on cost-effectiveness of any fire and rescue authority. It is right that, after London, the larger authorities such as the west midlands are best placed in that regard. That is an obvious point if one has relatively small authorities. It has nothing to do with density. I am talking about relatively small authorities such as the Isle of Wight having to staff a control room to operate 24 hours a day without the level of calls necessary to make that
 cost-effective. That is a simple fact of life. It has to do with size, not density. It would not matter if the Isle of Wight were compacted in an area a quarter of its size. There would still be exactly the same problems to do with size and cost-effectiveness. It is unfortunate that the hon. Gentleman, who speaks for the Conservative party, should take such a relaxed view of the importance of cost-effectiveness.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I should be grateful if the Minister would say something about the preparedness of the resilience teams in the eight areas. [Interruption.] I gather from the Minister shaking his head that they are not ready yet. The purpose of my intervention was to elicit that information, because it is my perception from talking to my local authorities, health service and everything else that the teams are not up and running yet. Nor is the area co-ordinator, and the fire services are not linked into that system. Perhaps the Minister will say something about when that system will be up and running and when the constituent local authorities are likely to have the budgets to deal with what they are required to do.

Nicholas Winterton: Order. The Minister should tread carefully.

Nick Raynsford: I shall tread very carefully in my response to the hon. Gentleman, Sir Nicholas, as I do not wish to incur your wrath.
 The regional resilience teams have been up and running for more than six months in all regions. During the autumn, we conducted an extensive survey to establish the degree of preparedness among a wide range of organisations in each region. The exercise was modelled on the one that took place in London. The co-ordination arrangements are proceeding apace, and it is important that they should. It is important to ensure that the working arrangements in the fire service are similar to those that apply to the wider resilience community. We will return to some of those issues when we discuss joint control rooms, but I shall now move on, to avoid incurring the Chairman's displeasure. 
 The amendment tabled by the hon. Member for Teignbridge would require the boundary committee to carry out its review before April 2005, but he must be aware that that would create an impossible timetable given the potential controversy and the complexity involved. It is therefore a wrecking amendment—it would have a wrecking effect—since if the review could not be carried out, the Government's hands would be tied far into the future. If, for example, regional combined fire authorities needed to be set up 10 years hence, as a result of circumstances not currently envisaged, and the boundary committee review had not taken place in 2004-05, we would not be able to do that. Even if the review had taken place, hon. Members might argue that it should be revisited or carried out again, if the circumstances pertaining in, for example, 2014 or 2024 were different. The amendment is 
 therefore ill thought out and impractical, and I hope that the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge will withdraw it. 
 I shall now address some specific points raised during the debate. The hon. Gentleman took me to task for not mentioning these provisions during the debates on the Bill that became the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Act 2003. That is not altogether surprising, because that Bill was debated in the early spring of last year, before we had published the fire and rescue service White Paper that set out the proposals.

Philip Hammond: The Minister will recall that he repeatedly, in the face of some scepticism from the Opposition, claimed that all the functions of elected regional assemblies would come down from central Government and would not be plucked upwards from local government. However, the next function to be announced for transfer to elected regional assemblies is one that is currently exercised by local authorities.

Nick Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman is trying to revisit debates that we had about the 2003 Act, and I do not intend to get pulled into that byway, because that would certainly incur the Chairman's wrath. However, I shall make one point clear: the analysis in our White Paper ''Our Fire and Rescue Service'' was based on the experiences of last year's fire dispute and the important lessons that had to be learned from that. As a result, we have set out new proposals, and anyone who is seriously concerned about the future of the fire and rescue service knows how important it is that we take a fundamental view of the future role of the service and get the arrangements right in the future. That is the Government's commitment.
 The hon. Gentleman also accused us of trying to subordinate every consideration—economy, effectiveness and efficiency—to a political drive for regions. That is not true. The point has been made forcibly, and I shall repeat it, that the provisions of clause 21 make it clear that the Secretary of State, in exercising his functions under the Bill, must be guided by considerations first of public safety and secondly of the economy, efficiency and effectiveness of fire and rescue authorities. Those are fundamentals, and will always guide our thinking on the subject. 
 Doubts were also expressed about the logic of the reasons behind the use of the Government office regions. I have already pointed out that there is a clear logic in terms of consistency with resilience arrangements.

Philip Hammond: At the risk of being called to order, given the linkage with civil contingency arrangements and resilience issues, is it then a foregone conclusion that the police structure must also be regionalised?

Nicholas Winterton: Order. The Minister may answer briefly.

Nick Raynsford: I do not think that I could possibly say that it was a foregone conclusion, given that it is not my responsibility and I would be straying way beyond the territory of this Committee. I have made it
 clear that there has to be a regional co-ordinator as part of the regional resilience structure and that that person will typically be a senior police officer. The police will be working within the regional framework.
 The hon. Member for Teignbridge raised again the question of the regions and asked whether there was a case for changing the regions in the light of regional identity rather than efficiency or vice versa. Opening up the issue of regional boundaries would start a long, protracted and, I suspect, very unproductive debate, which would undoubtedly delight many Liberal Democrats who enjoy the type of proceeding where debate thrives, people talk ad nauseam and nothing happens. That is not the priority of this Government.

Philip Hammond: Is not a similar argument about the danger of reopening established boundaries often used to justify repression in parts of Africa that had their boundaries drawn on a totally arbitrary basis by colonial administrators in the past?

Nicholas Winterton: Order. Obviously I err on the side of the Opposition to ensure that they get all their points answered, but foreign affairs is not part of the Committee's remit.

Nick Raynsford: I have been tempted by matters of the Home Office in respect of policing. Now I am tempted into the responsibilities of my right hon. Friend the Foreign Secretary. I must, regretfully, decline to get into an interesting debate about the precise boundary between Burundi and neighbouring African countries. I will return rapidly to the matters in hand.
 The hon. Member for Teignbridge raised the question of the definition of national priorities. That is very much a function of the draft national framework, which we have already published. It will be given statutory backing by the Bill and will be subject to regular review and update by the Secretary of State. National priorities come clearly within the context of the new national framework. He also said that our provision in clause 2(2)(b) would allow regionalisation, contrary to the pledge that we are not regionalising except where people vote for an elected regional assembly. 
 Our policy is not to regionalise, except where there is a vote in favour of an elected regional assembly, but for reasons that I have already explained, we believe that it is essential to have effective, regional co-ordination arrangements for the fire service for those areas of the service that must be run at a regional level. We have urged fire authorities to work together to create regional management boards to achieve that. This provision is purely a fail-safe to ensure that, in the interests of public safety, if there is a failure we have the means to act rather than being left powerless. In view of those considerations, I urge the hon. Gentlemen not to press their amendments. If they do, I will urge my hon. Friends to vote against them.

Philip Hammond: I am somewhat disappointed by the Minister's reply. There are a huge number of areas in the Bill and the clause that we can agree about, and I am disappointed that he has adopted an aggressive tone in relation to this subsection. Resilience can and probably should be dealt with in the Civil Contingencies Bill, which is being debated in Committee Room 15. The regional management board is, to a significant extent, duplicating. It is not necessary to have a regional management board to co-ordinate individual fire authorities, to then co-ordinate with the regional civil contingencies structure. It would be perfectly possible for the fire authorities, as first responders, to be drawn in to that system directly.
 The Minister used again the example of control rooms, comparing London per call costs with Isle of Wight per call costs. I suspect that he understands well that whatever he does, call costs in London will always be lower per unit than on the Isle of Wight. I shall place a small bet with him, if that is permitted, that in five or ten years' time, no matter what he does to the structure, there will still be a significant differential between costs in London and those in the least densely populated parts of the country. He talked on Second Reading about control rooms as if the regionalisation agenda only concerned regionalising the control rooms, but it goes far beyond that. I understand entirely his arguments for using larger units to deal with extraordinary and catastrophic events that require a massive response. However, the resilience work to which he refers will only ever amount to a tiny fraction of the fire and rescue authorities' work.

Jim Knight: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Philip Hammond: In a moment.
 The Government are re-orienting those bodies, as part of their modernisation programme, to be less militaristic, less responsive and less interventionist, and to be more preventive, more educative and more community-rooted bodies. It seems extraordinary to Conservative members of the Committee that at the same time as launching this agenda for change, which will see fire and rescue services more community-based, it is necessary to create a higher level structure that appears to suck power, responsibility and accountability away from the communities that the fire and rescue services serve. 
 On the control room issue, there may be arguments about arrangements to deal with large and catastrophic incidents, but I have an example, on a much smaller scale, from my own police authority, of the results of the amalgamation of the district control rooms in to a single control room for the whole of the county of Surrey at the Surrey police headquarters in Guildford. The results have been mixed, because all too often—despite the latest technology available, which it has—it is quite apparent to the caller that the person taking the calls does not have clue where the caller is, what the local geography is, or what they are talking about. The Minister can tell us that the control 
 rooms will be equipped with the latest mapping technology so that the operator has a map of the area in front of him, but that does not deal with human frailty. When Mrs. Bloggs at No. 72 rings up saying that someone is breaking in to the chip shop across the road, the guy at the other end, looking at a map, says, ''Is that No. 95?'' She says, ''I don't know. It's Mrs. Brown's chip shop across the road. You know, on the corner.'' He does not know, because he does not know the area or have any local knowledge. That is already a problem on a Surrey-wide basis and has caused a considerable amount of correspondence from constituents. I invite the Minister to consider how that problem will be multiplied in a regional control room.

Nick Raynsford: I put it to the hon. Gentleman that knowledge of the proprietor of any shop in any locality would be available only on the basis of a very small area. There is no way that someone in even one local authority that embraces two or three small townships could be expected to have that degree of knowledge of every nook and cranny. That would be a completely uneconomic basis on which to run the control room. I hope that the hon. Gentleman recognises that.

Philip Hammond: Obviously, there is a balance to strike, but I invite the Minister to consider the degree of knowledge that a Member of Parliament has of his or her constituency. When talking to a constituent about a shop or a street, the MP will have a picture—
Mr. Raynsford rose—

Philip Hammond: The Minister is going to tell me that we need 650 control rooms.

Nick Raynsford: Absolutely. That would be the logic.

Philip Hammond: I am simply inviting the Minister to consider the direction of travel. Reducing the number of control rooms from four to one for Surrey police has caused the problems that I referred to. We already have one control room for the Surrey fire service, so we are not in the territory of having 650 control rooms. He is now suggesting that we should shrink the number of control rooms, thus making the response less local. I suggest to him that I readily envisage arguments—I have not heard them in detail—why that might be appropriate and the best way to deal with some incidents. However, will he acknowledge that many day-to-day functions of the fire and rescue service will be more difficult?

Nick Raynsford: I put it to the hon. Gentleman that if his analysis were correct, the single control room for London—a city with more than 7 million people over a huge area—would not be as efficient as it is. Can he explain why London is able to operate as efficiently as it does?

Nicholas Winterton: I call Philip Holland—I mean Hammond.

Philip Hammond: I am the latter, Sir Nicholas. I confidently predict that after the next general election there will be many more Conservative Members called Philip with surnames beginning with ''H'', although it may not be Holland.
 I cannot answer the Minister's question specifically. I am simply relating to him and the Committee my experience of the amalgamation of the police incident control rooms in Surrey. I ask him to consider those concerns.

Jim Knight: I intervened before we got into the mini-debate about control rooms. I may have a chance to offer my opinion on that on another occasion, but my intervention concerned the question of achieving economies of scale through regional management boards. Has the hon. Gentleman thought about the potential for procurement on a regional basis? Procurement projects for specialist equipment that might be necessary across a region could be managed by the board, which would achieve significant economies for the council tax payer.

Philip Hammond: The hon. Gentleman is right. I hope that I have consistently said that we have no quibble with the idea that larger units and co-operation, clustering and collaboration are required for certain purposes. The problem, as is often the case with the Government, is whether there should be a bottom-up process of voluntary collaboration, working together in partnership, or whether there should be a top-down, imposed process. The proposition is that the process is imposed on the basis of artificial boundaries—the regional management boards are to be imposed on the basis of the regional development agencies' boundaries.

Jim Knight: I have no wish to extend the debate for any longer than necessary, but my selective hearing probably differs from the hon. Gentleman's because I thought that the Minister said that they would intervene only if things were not working. Otherwise, the process would be bottom-up and on a voluntary basis. However, if the savings are not being achieved for the council tax payer, central Government can try to achieve that.

Philip Hammond: That is nonsense. Collaboration on a voluntary basis means that the fire and rescue authorities must decide the clusters in which they wish to work. I give the example of Wiltshire fire authority, which has a long-standing relationship with Hampshire fire authority. In a clustering arrangement, those authorities would expect to work together, but they will not because they are in different regions. There is a clear distinction between something primarily determined by the constituent authorities—a collaboration or genuine partnership—and something imposed from the top in a format and on boundaries determined by Whitehall. We do not regard that as a healthy way to proceed.
 I am surprised that the Minister prays the public safety argument in aid for subsection (2)(b). I read subsection (2)(a) as being perfectly adequate to deal with the situation for which the Minister is saying that 
 subsection (2)(b) would be used. Subsection (2)(b) provides no hurdle and allows the Secretary of State to create a combined fire and rescue authority without meeting any tests. Subsection (2)(a) provides tests, but subsection (2)(b) does not. We must conclude that the approach is part of the Government's programme of regionalisation by stealth. Today it is our fire services, yesterday it was our housing pot, and tomorrow, I detect from the Minister's reluctance to comment further, it will be our police forces.

Richard Younger-Ross: The hon. Gentleman's points about public safety were right, especially in relation to the size and appropriateness of the regional control rooms. He gave the example of someone not knowing where a chip shop is, but with a region as large as the south-west is proposed to be, people may not know where towns are. Some Committee members do not know how to pronounce my constituency, Teignbridge, which is pronounced ''Teenbridge'', while I live in the town of Teignmouth, which is pronounced ''Tinmouth''. There will be potential confusion with pronunciation and spelling in control rooms, particularly in areas that have a high number of tourists, who might not know the spelling of towns such as Dunchideock, Stokeinteignhead, Combeinteignhead, Kingskerswell and Kingsteignton.

Philip Hammond: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman could list many more such examples, but he is agreeing with my point, and I thank him for his comments.
 We fundamentally object to the Government's approach. The Minister said that they would want regional management boards to be voluntary. However, having mapped out their agenda and saying that they want it to be met voluntarily, the Government are taking powers that local authorities can understand will be used if they do not do voluntarily what the Government want them to do. It is a little like capping, when the Government say, ''We want you to set your council tax at a certain level voluntarily, and if you don't, we will impose it on you.'' That is not a positive voluntarism. 
 We do not believe that the Government have sufficiently explored the opportunities to promote bottom-up collaboration and to cluster fire and rescue authorities in their new environment to achieve our agreed objectives of greater public safety and the most effective and economic delivery. Clustering need not be monolithic. It could take different forms, with large units for procurement purposes and smaller units for some operational purposes. However, the Government have decided on a one-size-fits-all approach and, by chance, the map of Britain hanging proudly on the Deputy Prime Minister's wall, which shows just nine regions, is the favoured solution for all purposes, including procurement, human resources management, operational direction and civil resilience planning. 
 We must resist what subsection (2)(b) represents, and I will urge my hon. Friends to vote in favour of amendment No. 9.

John Pugh: The Liberal Democrats will not press amendment No. 1. I was hurt by the Minister's comment that it was a wrecking amendment, which was an uncharitable thought. It was an attempt to engage the Minister in constructive debate. We would not concede that the adjectives sensible and pragmatic apply to the Minister's argument. What he said, in effect, is that although the boundaries are far from perfect, there are existing resilience and civil defence arrangements in London that appear to be capable of working within the time scale in which the Bill, when it is enacted, will operate. We will look at that evidence and consider our amendment, and we will not press it to a Division.
 Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 8.

Question accordingly negatived.

Nicholas Winterton: Order. Members of the Committee will see from the new provisional selection list that the amendments that we would initially have debated with amendments Nos. 12 and 14 in the last group have been transferred to the new group, headed by amendment No. 3.

Richard Younger-Ross: I beg to move amendment No. 3, in
clause 2, page 2, line 19, leave out subsection (4) and insert—
 '(4) A scheme under this section as mentioned in:
 (a) subsection (3)(a) may include modifications to the draft scheme which seem appropriate to the Secretary of State after consulting the existing authorities in question, and
 (b) subsection (3)(b) only be made if an inquiry has been held under Clause 26 of this Act and the authority or several authorities have been shown to fail to discharge their duties under this Act.'.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
 Amendment No. 10, in 
clause 2, page 2, line 21, leave out 'after consulting' and insert 
 'and are agreed to by'. 
Amendment No. 5, in 
clause 2, page 2, line 25, at end insert— 
 '(c) all local authorities within or including the area of the fire and rescue authorities affected.'. 
Amendment No. 6, in 
clause 2, page 2, line 32, at end insert— 
 '(d) all local authorities within or including the area of the fire and rescue authorities affected.'. 
Amendment No. 2, in
clause 2, page 2, line 36, leave out 'may' and insert 'shall'. 
Amendment No. 13, in 
clause 2, page 2, line 38, at end insert 
 'and shall only proceed with the proposed scheme, variation or revocation as the case may be if the inquiry concludes that the making of the scheme, variation or revocation is in the interests of greater economy, efficiency and effectiveness of the fire and rescue service or services concerned.'. 
Amendment No. 12, in 
clause 2, page 2, line 39, leave out subsection (9). 
Amendment No. 14, in 
clause 2, page 3, line 1, leave out subsection (10). 
Amendment No. 15, in 
clause 3, page 3, line 13, at end insert 
 'and which, in the case of a scheme made under section 2, subsection (3)(a), have been agreed to by the authorities in question and in the case of a scheme made under section 2, subsection (3)(b), have been considered by the inquiry held under the provisions of section 2, subsection (8).'.

Richard Younger-Ross: I shall be fairly brief, if for no other reason than that the job description of MP did not state that the art of bi-location was required. As later I have to be in another Committee, moving another set of amendments, I hope that hon. Members will accept my apologies for not being present for the latter part of this debate.
 The amendments are straightforward. They would ensure that there is proper consultation before changes are made. Amendments Nos. 3 and 5 aim to find out what the Minister intends when he talks about consulting other bodies. Will that normally include the local authorities in the area? Although they are not fire authorities, they best represent the views of the local population. They are democratically elected, and if there are anxieties about the local fire service the councillors will be well aware of the issues involved because the electorate often cannot tell who runs which authority or the difference between them. Local authorities would be good bodies to consult on the changes, as they will be a mine of information on these matters. 
 Amendment No. 2 would simply remove the word ''may'' and insert ''shall''. It should not be for the Secretary of State to say, ''Well, maybe I will have an inquiry.'' All kinds of pressures are put on Ministers, and one of those may be economy, so Ministers might not want the expense of inquiries, because the section involved was running over budget or the Department's budget had to be cut. If the Chancellor issued an edict that budgets must be cut to save money in the run-up to an election, Ministers might cut down on inquiries. That would be a shame as these are very important matters. 
 If circumstances were to involve a move from a failing framework—which the Minister would have to prove was failing—to a regional body, without any of the safeguards of a regional assembly, there ought to be an inquiry. That should be as a matter of course, not as a possibility—if there happened to be an ''r'' in the month, or if the Minister had got out of bed on the right side and felt so inclined.

Philip Hammond: Our core position is that the authorities defined in clause 1 have to be responsible for delivering the service to the public, and they have to discharge those responsibilities in the most appropriate way. As I have said many times, we recognise that very often that will be by means of combination with other authorities, so authorities will be coming to the Secretary of State with combination schemes. It is entirely appropriate that there are provisions in the Bill for doing that, as there were provisions in the Fire Services Act 1947. We also recognise that it is appropriate for the Secretary of State to have a fall-back power, as specified in subsection (3)(b), to provide a combination scheme ''on his own initiative'', but safeguards are needed.
 Amendment No. 3 would mean that, where the Secretary of State proposed the modification of a scheme, the only requirement on him would be to consult the local authorities involved. That would present us with the danger of radical modification of a scheme that originated from the fire authorities themselves, such as a voluntary scheme of collaboration—exactly the kind the thing that I would seek to promote and that the Minister would have us believe he would favour. ''Radical'' does not necessarily mean large in scale. It may be that the modification of a few carefully chosen words would fundamentally change what the fire authorities had in mind; for example, in appointing members to the combined fire authority. There must, therefore, be a safeguard against the Secretary of State misusing the powers under subsection (3)(a) to take a scheme that was presented as voluntary and to change it out of recognition. 
 I realise that the Secretary of State may want to review a scheme, and to come back to the authorities and propose certain changes. As long as the authorities agree with that, there is no problem; it remains their scheme, with improvements proposed by the ODPM and agreed by the authorities. If the Secretary of State wants to propose something more radical which is not, in the view of the fire authorities concerned, acceptable, he should have to resort to his powers to create a CFA on his own initiative, rather than allowing a CFA to be voluntarily created with his potentially substantial modifications. Our amendment No. 10 would require the authorities to agree to all modifications. We believe that that is a more transparent approach. 
 As I said, amendments Nos. 12 and 14 are not particularly important in themselves. They are simply appropriate consequential amendments that would flow from a requirement for the fire authorities involved to agree to modifications, because the circumstances envisaged in subsections (9) and (10) could not arise in that situation. 
 Amendment No. 3 in the name of Liberal Democrat Members deals with the powers of the Secretary of State under subsection (3)(b) to make a scheme ''on his own initiative'', and means that the failure of a fire and rescue authority to discharge its duties would have to be demonstrated. I understand where the hon. Member for Teignbridge is coming from. The problem 
 is that the duties that a fire and rescue authority has to discharge under the Bill are not simply the duties to undertake a community safety programme under clause 6, to provide firefighting facilities under clause 7, and to prepare for and deal with road accidents under clause 8 and other emergencies under clause 9. 
 I am referring to a duty to have regard to the Government's national framework, which the ODPM is drawing up, and which it will revise and reissue from time to time. I note that there is no provision whatever for parliamentary scrutiny of that document. We shall come to that later. I fear that the hon. Gentleman's approach is flawed, in that the Government can create a situation in which compliance with their agenda, set out in the framework, is part of the duty of a fire and rescue authority. That is a fundamental issue, because it means that an authority can—I do not say ''will''—have its agenda determined centrally through the mechanism of the framework. We shall debate later whether the comprehensive performance assessment and its regard to compliance with the framework is an appropriate way for the Government to ensure that their unscrutinised agenda in the national framework is implemented locally.

Richard Younger-Ross: I thank my hon. Friend for giving way again.

Philip Hammond: I am not the hon. Gentleman's hon. Friend.

Richard Younger-Ross: I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way again. I am disappointed that he has so little faith. I am sure that the Minister will listen to our views on the framework and, when we come to debate it, that he will ensure proper scrutiny of it at a later date.

Philip Hammond: As the hon. Gentleman said, he has not led for his party in a Standing Committee before. I fear that he may discover that he is being rather optimistic about the degree of flexibility that the Minister will show. However, I am willing to eat a large amount of humble pie if—

Nick Raynsford: Get out and order it.

Philip Hammond: I will be delighted if, when we reach the relevant clause, it turns out that the Minister is prepared for the national framework and each revision of it to be subject to parliamentary scrutiny, and for it to come into effect only when appropriate Committees of both Houses of Parliament have approved it. That will be extremely good news, and I am ready to get the truck on its way with vast quantities of humble pie. That reminds me of a television programme that I watched last night, although humble pie will be more agreeable than some of the things eaten in that programme.

Nick Raynsford: Bugs.

Philip Hammond: Bugs, as the Minister says. I am sure that you do not watch such ineffectual entertainment on television, Sir Nicholas, but some of us do.
 The Conservatives' approach, recognising the need for the reserve power in subsection (3)(b), is represented by amendment No. 13, which would require the Secretary of State to demonstrate publicly at an inquiry that the proposal would lead to greater effectiveness, efficiency and economy in the delivery of the service. I have suggested before and will do so again that that is not an onerous test, and the Government should be able to accept it. We support the Liberal Democrats' amendment No. 2, which would make the inquiry mandatory where the Secretary of State uses his own initiative to impose a combination on fire authorities. That is an entirely appropriate mechanism. 
 Amendment No. 13 sets a modest hurdle, and I hope that the Minister will accept it. Amendment No. 15 to clause 3 would achieve a similar aim in relation to the so-called incidental and supplementary provisions, which sound like something at the back of the book that one does not have to think about too much. Those provisions cover vital matters such as who appoints the members of the combined fire authority. As we know, the Secretary of State intends to keep the power to appoint a significant number of those members. We therefore believe that a similar hurdle is needed, and amendment No. 15 would erect that. 
 Amendments Nos. 5 and 6 would simply introduce more consultation. Again, I do not want to do the Minister's dirty work for him, but I am sure that he has some choice words about how Liberal Democrats like to consult endlessly on everything. There is nothing wrong with consultation, but it cannot have escaped the notice of the hon. Member for Teignbridge or his party that, at the end of all these consultations, the Government invariably do what they were going to do anyway, after wasting a lot of everyone's time and energy. The Bill needs real teeth to ensure that it does not become the mechanism for the over-centralisation of our fire and rescue services. It does not need more cotton wool in the form of consultation without any requirements or obligations on the Government to show that any hurdles have been surmounted.

Nick Raynsford: All the amendments have a single underlying objective to make a public inquiry mandatory before fire and rescue authorities can be combined, and to create a series of subsequent procedural hurdles before the outcome of an inquiry can be implemented. In resisting their overall intent, I want to make the Government's position very clear. First, we are committed to consultation. The Bill requires consultation with affected fire and rescue authorities and with other persons whom the Secretary of State believes will be affected. That might include other local authorities, police authorities or any significant stakeholder.
 The problem with specifying in detail who should be consulted is that one cannot list everyone. If the Bill includes a partial list, those who subsequently interpret it might well infer that organisations not included in the Bill have been omitted deliberately. That inference would be entirely false, but that is the 
 risk of a list, and the reason that we are not sympathetic to the idea of listing all the bodies that should be specified. Certainly, it is our intention that no one should be excluded. We consulted widely on the draft national framework, and we intend to do the same with these provisions. 
 Secondly, the Bill permits the Secretary of State to institute a public inquiry, but it does not make that mandatory. Again, we intend to hold a public inquiry unless there are overriding reasons of urgency that militate against it. I therefore want to think about amendment No. 2 to see whether we can incorporate its spirit without losing the capacity to move quickly. In an earlier debate, I said that I was not opposed to considering sensible Opposition proposals. We entirely accept the spirit in which the amendment was tabled. I hope that the hon. Member for Teignbridge will recognise that there is a need to enable the Government to move quickly, so we cannot accept the amendment as it is drafted, because it is absolute. With that caveat, we will work on it and try to produce an appropriate amendment to clarify our intention.

Philip Hammond: We all recognised that in certain emergency circumstances special provisions are needed, and it seems to me that the Civil Contingencies Bill deals adequately with that agenda. However, the Minister is now speculating on an emergency circumstance that would require a combined fire and rescue authority to be created. An emergency, by definition, does not call for structural and organisational change—it calls for action. Can the Minister elaborate on the type of emergency that might require the creation of a CFA in short order?

Nick Raynsford: A public inquiry is likely to take several months, if not longer. A resilience network is essential to protect the public against serious risks—whether or not those are terrorist risks is immaterial—and if one or more constituent fire authorities failed to work effectively as part of that network, action would have to be taken quickly. A delay of a year or more while a public inquiry took place would not be acceptable. That is one example.
 It is our intention to hold public inquiries, unless there are overriding reasons of urgency that militate against that. If authorities are failing to work together to set up effective regional resilience arrangements, with all that that implies for public safety, it really would not be right to delay action for the period of a long drawn-out public inquiry. 
 The other amendments are less helpful. Amendments Nos. 3 and 13 seek to prescribe the grounds on which an inquiry might reach its conclusions, and to restrict those grounds to certain parts of the Bill. Where an inquiry is held, its purpose must be to take into account the whole picture and examine the case for combination on all the grounds contained in the Bill, not just those that are acceptable to hon. Members.
 Amendment No. 10 seeks to require the agreement of authorities to any modification by the Secretary of State to a combination scheme that they themselves have proposed. I cannot agree to that amendment. Consultation is essential, and clause 2(4) provides for it. If, to take an example, Cheshire, Shropshire and Staffordshire fire authorities were to put to me tomorrow a proposal that they should combine—when the people of Cheshire are due to vote in a referendum on whether they will have a north-west assembly and, as a result, a north-west regional fire and rescue authority—it would be extraordinary to allow Cheshire then to veto the inevitable modification to restrict the combination to Shropshire and Staffordshire. That modification would be a purely simple and practical way of avoiding the totally time-wasting exercise of creating a combination across a regional boundary, if there is a possibility that one part of that region will move into a regional framework as a result of a vote in an elected regional assembly. That is a classic example of circumstances in which it might be necessary for the Secretary of State to modify a proposal, and giving the authority the right to veto that modification could result in a wholly perverse waste of time and money.

Philip Hammond: The Minister is talking as if there were some obligation or requirement for the people of the north-west to have a regional fire authority if, by some mischance, they were to vote for an elected regional assembly. As I recall, there is nothing in legislation to that effect. Does the Minister intend, perhaps during the passage of the Bill, to bring forward an amendment to the Regional Assembles (Preparations) Act 2003 to the effect that a statement will appear on the question, so that people are aware that they will get a regional fire and rescue authority if they vote for an elected regional assembly?

Nick Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman, who is normally quite acute on these things, has clearly missed the significance of the White Paper, ''Our Fire and Rescue Service''. It made it absolutely explicit that, where people vote for an elected regional assembly, there will be a regional fire and rescue authority similar to the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority. That is our policy intention, and the legislative provision will be included in the regional assembly Bill that we intend to prepare; hopefully it will be available in draft before people come to vote in the referendums.

Hugo Swire: Will the Minister confirm that an area that votes against having an elected regional assembly, thereby maintaining the status quo, will not at any stage be penalised?

Nick Raynsford: It certainly will not be penalised. We believe in entirely free choice, such as we extended to the people of Scotland, Wales, London and Northern Ireland. There is a devolved body in each of those areas. We are doing exactly the same in the English regions, and we will abide by the referendum's conclusions, which, we have said, has always been our policy.
 On amendments Nos. 5 and 6, we cannot specify all those whom we consult. Annex E to the draft national framework lists 52 separate organisations that we formally consulted, many, if not most, of whom could make a case for inclusion in the Bill. I hope that the hon. Member for Teignbridge recognises that it would be unworkable to have such long lists, and there is the problem of those inadvertently omitted from them. 
 Amendment No. 15 would do two things: first, it would incorporate the proposal for an individual authority veto in amendment No. 10, to which I have already referred. Secondly, it would require the supplemental and incidental provisions of a scheme to have been put before a public inquiry. That contradicts the purpose of a prior inquiry held under clause 2(8)(a) and appears to be a delaying tactic. Perversely, it would make an inquiry, which I have already committed the Government to holding, unless urgent reasons of public safety make it impossible, less likely by increasing the time that the overall process will take. 
 Amendments Nos. 12 and 14 would delete the subsections intended to allow the Government to synchronise any reorganisation of local government in any area with a consequent need to reorganise the fire and rescue service. The provisions re-enact section 6(2A) of the Fire Services Act 1947, and are sensible administrative measures in the event of any such local government reorganisation. For example, in the past, when a two-tier county and district local government structure has been replaced by unitary authorities or a mixture of two-tier and unitary authorities, the old county fire authority has disappeared. The provisions of section 6 of the 1947 Act have been used to establish a combined fire authority of the new principal authorities, covering the area of the old county fire authority. The establishment of the CFA for Kent and Medway is an example. In effect, the combination scheme re-created a fire authority covering the whole shire county area at the same moment at which it would otherwise have been abolished by the local government reorganisation. 
 It is possible that the same sort of thing might need to happen again if there is a future local government reorganisation under the Local Government Acts. Though not envisaged, it is logically possible that it could also occur in any reorganisation under the Regional Assemblies (Preparations) Act 2003. That would happen only in an area that had voted for an elected regional assembly, and in which local government reorganisation took place before the elected regional assembly was up and running and before the new regional fire and rescue authority could be established, which is unlikely. However, we would not rule out the possibility in certain circumstances, and it would be bizarre not to have the necessary administrative arrangements to ensure a smooth transfer. 
 The amendments are neither helpful nor desirable and I ask hon. Members not to press them, with the proviso that I will carefully consider the possibility of defining and limiting the circumstances in which it may not be possible to hold a public inquiry.

Richard Younger-Ross: On the lead amendment, I heard what the Minister said. I take his point about long lists; I had hoped that the term ''local authorities'' was broad enough, but if I understand the Minister correctly he is saying that they would be consulted in generality. As that is on the record, I will be happy to ask leave to withdraw amendments No. 3, and I will not press amendments Nos. 5 and 6.
 I am grateful to the Minister for saying that he will look again at amendment No. 2, and I accept that there may be an eventuality in which one would not wish to delay a process. Even if I had reservations about that process, I understand that in a crisis it would not be logical to delay it for, say, six months while an inquiry took place. I would be grateful if wording could be drafted at a later stage to take that into account. I will not press the amendment. 
 Finally on amendment No. 10, I have a lot of sympathy with what has been said. I find the wording of the amendment weak and I take the point about vetoes. One cannot have a situation where one small authority holds all the other authorities in the area to ransom. But if more than half of the authorities oppose something, is it right to pursue the matter? Might that be reconsidered at another stage or in another place? Perhaps the Conservatives can come up with a tighter form of wording that will overcome the veto problem.

Philip Hammond: I am grateful to the Minister for what he said about amendment No. 2. I hope that he can come forward with a form of words on Report that clearly makes it the norm that an inquiry will be held. On amendments Nos. 12 and 14, to some extent I understand the technical problem that he identified in deleting subsections (9) and (10). I laboured the point that they were merely consequential amendments. If I had not tabled them, he would have told me that amendment No. 10 was incredible because it did not provide for the proper consequences.
 As I indicated earlier, and notwithstanding what the Minister said, I will seek to press amendment No. 10 to a Division. There is an important principle here. I accept what the hon. Member for Teignbridge said.

Nicholas Winterton: It is pronounced ''Teenbridge''.

Nick Raynsford: As in ''teeny''.

Philip Hammond: I do not think that I have ever been corrected by the Chair before on my pronunciation. I shall try to follow your strictures, Sir Nicholas. The hon. Member for Teignbridge—it sounds as if it is just outside Glasgow, when pronounced that way—suggested that there might be a way of finding the middle ground here. It is terribly important that we set out our concerns that too much power is being transferred to the Secretary of State.
 The Minister and I have had this discussion on many occasions. He is very good at standing in front of the Committee in an emollient frame of mind and explaining that he would never intend to use these powers in anything like the way that the Opposition describe, but we must look at what is in the Bill. We 
 must remember that although, for the last seven years, the Minister has been in stately occupation of his post, he may not always be there. Labour Members have to contemplate the possibility that they may not always be there. We are making legislation that may have a long shelf life.

Stephen McCabe: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Philip Hammond: In a moment. I will give the hon. Gentleman a little more time to think of something suitably witty to say. On the precedent of the 1947 Act, we can anticipate that we are making legislation that might have to last us for half a century. It is important that we do not carelessly give away powers to the Secretary of State however much he may protest that he does not intend to use them in ways that we suggest he could and which everyone acknowledges the Bill would allow.

Stephen McCabe: I just want to tease out—I hope that it is not too Glasgow an expression—what the hon. Gentleman was saying. Was he giving us a warning that he fears a future a right-wing rabid Tory Government? Is that the essence of his fear?

Philip Hammond: There are two questions wrapped up into one; whether I predict such a thing and whether I would fear it if I did. I suspect the answer to the hon. Gentleman is that I do not predict a rabid right-wing Tory Government. I predict a Tory Government led by my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard). Such a Government would, as the hon. Gentleman may already have started to perceive, provide a model of moderate and sensible government in their approach to the problems that the country has faced for the last seven years, which, under the present regime, show no signs of getting any better.
 I ask that amendment No. 10 be put separately to a vote.

Richard Younger-Ross: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
 Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. 
 Amendment proposed: No. 10, in 
clause 2, page 2, line 21, leave out 'after consulting' and insert 
 'and are agreed to by'.—[Mr. Hammond.] 
 Question put, That the amendment be made:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 9.

The Chairman, being of the opinion that the principle of the clause and any matters arising thereon had been adequately discussed in the course of debate on the amendments proposed thereto, forthwith put the Question, pursuant to Standing Orders Nos. 68 and 89, That the clause stand part of the Bill. 
 Question agreed to. 
 Clause 2 ordered to stand part of the Bill.

Clause 3 - Creation of combined fire and rescue authorities: supplementary

Philip Hammond: I beg to move amendment No. 16, in
clause 3, page 3, line 16, leave out from 'authorities' to ')'.

Nicholas Winterton: With this it will be convenient to discuss the following:
 Amendment No. 17, in 
clause 3, page 3, line 18, leave out from 'authority' to end of line 20. 
Amendment No. 19, in 
clause 3, page 3, line 34, leave out subsection (4). 
Amendment No. 7, in 
clause 3, page 3, line 35, leave out 'half' and insert 'a third of'. 
Amendment No. 20, in 
clause 3, page 3, line 37, leave out subsection (5).

Philip Hammond: The provisions are supplementary and incidental provisions, which, as I have remarked already, the unwary reader might be led to think are of minor consequence. In fact, a careful reading of the clause shows that those supplementary and incidental provisions include fundamental matters that relate to the CFAs that would be established under clause 2.
 I suspect that the Minister will not be surprised to learn that the amendment targets the right of the Secretary of State to appoint 50 per cent. of the members of a CFA, minus one, which would give him a huge say in the running of that authority. The Minister has argued that, for reasons of democratic accountability, it would be appropriate for regional fire and rescue authorities to be accountable to elected regional assemblies, should regional assemblies be created. It is slightly disingenuous for the Minister to argue simultaneously that he must be allowed to appoint half the members of any such authority. 
 If combined fire and rescue authorities were created other than as a result of the establishment of elected regional assemblies, there simply would be a naked transfer of power from local authorities to the Secretary of State; a provision that undermines most, if not all, of the Government's rhetoric about wanting to remove the hand of Whitehall from the affairs of running fire and rescue authorities. The Secretary of State has no such powers of appointment at the moment, and I am curious to know how a Minister who professes the creed of localism can possibly justify seeking to give himself, in effect, the power to appoint half the members of a combined fire and rescue 
 authority, when the arrangement up to now has been that members of those authorities are secondees from the clause 1 authorities that would underlie the CFA that is created. 
 The provision, more than any other in the Bill, underlines the Government's centralising tendency, and suggests the hollowness of the apparent commitment to decentralise. Many people who have closely observed what has happened during the past 18 months have detected a sea change in the attitude of the ODPM. At the beginning of the firefighters' dispute in the summer of 2002, Ministers were keen to emphasise that this was an issue between the local authority employers and the Fire Brigades Union and not a matter for central Government. As the dispute dragged on, the Government became more and more involved, both publicly and behind the scenes in negotiations. 
 It is apparent to many people who are interested in these matters that at some point the Government lost their enthusiasm for the idea that the fire and rescue services were local services to be delivered by local authorities, and decided that they alone could sort out the mess. They decided that they would take for themselves the power to bang heads together to get done the things that Ministers' agendas required were done. The Minister is nodding his head. In some cases, there may be a conflict between the demands of efficiency and the demands of democratic accountability. However, a Minister and a Government who make much of their commitment to decentralisation and localism should think very carefully about how that balance is to be struck. 
 It is difficult to imagine how anyone seriously can defend the Secretary of State taking completely new powers to appoint the members of a body who up to now have always been appointed locally. That is the essence of the reason for tabling amendment No. 16. Amendments Nos. 17, 19 and 20 are consequential amendments, drafted to the best of our ability to deal with changes to the Bill that would be required if the Secretary of State's right to appoint members of a CFA were deleted, as amendment No. 16 seeks to do.

Jim Knight: Given that the clause deals with the setting up of CFAs provided for under clause 2, would the hon. Gentleman prefer a system whereby the authority was directly accountable through regional government?

Philip Hammond: No. If CFAs are established, I would prefer them to operate in the perfectly satisfactory way in which I understand the current CFAs operate, with members appointed by the underlying clause 1 authorities. The Minister is giving a variant of his usually benign smile, which suggests that he thinks that existing fire and rescue authorities do not operate effectively. One is bound to ask why the provisions of clause 3 are limited to new fire and rescue authorities created under the powers of clause 2, and do not extend to those authorities that exist by virtue of clause 4 bringing forward provisions from the 1947 Act. I hope that the Minister will not tell us that the
 situation in the 38 existing CFAs is unsatisfactory. If it is, the Minister should put forward proposals to deal with that. I am deeply sceptical of any proposal that seeks to address a problem by giving more power to the Secretary of State.
 Sitting suspended for a Division in the House. 
 On resuming—

Philip Hammond: I should like now to press amendment No. 16.

Nicholas Winterton: I have no alternative but to accept that request.

Nick Raynsford: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. I hope that the Committee will forgive me for being out of breath, as I have just come rapidly up the stairs. I understood that there would be a second Division in the House, which is why I was not back. Before the Division, I understood that the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge was concerned about the Secretary of State's ability—

Nicholas Winterton: Order. Will the Minister make a point of order rather than continue the debate? I am trying to act in the best interests of the Committee as a whole. If the Minister has a genuine point of order, will he put it to me?

Nick Raynsford: The genuine point of order is whether it is appropriate for the amendment to be put to a vote without the opportunity for the Minister responsible to set out the Government's views.

Nicholas Winterton: If the Conservative spokesman has completed his speech, I have to put the amendment to a vote. There cannot be a point of order on that, so I shall now put the amendment to a vote.

Linda Gilroy: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. I was with Members who were about to leave the Chamber after the Division, and I wonder if they have taken a lift that occasionally sticks. That has happened to me, when four members of a Standing Committee were trapped in a lift.

Nicholas Winterton: I fear that that is not a point of order.
Mr. Murphy rose—

Nicholas Winterton: I shall now put the amendment.

Jim Murphy: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. I understand that you cannot take a point of order during a Division, but I was seeking to catch your eye in advance of your putting the question. When you called the earlier Division, you said that you would give colleagues from all parties the opportunity to return to the Room. I know that we had advised Labour Members of the possibility of a second Division. I therefore crave your indulgence to give colleagues the opportunity to return from the
 Chamber and thus the opportunity to participate in this Division, as well as to participate in Divisions in the Chamber.

Nicholas Winterton: I have to say to the Government Whip that I can permit up to 20 minutes only to obtain a quorum. I have no alternative but to suggest that hon. Gentleman resumes his seat.
 Question put, that the amendment be made:—
The Committee divided: Ayes 4, Noes 7.

Question accordingly negatived.

Philip Hammond: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. I am extremely disappointed about the slow progress that the Committee made between the moment when you said you would put the Question and the time when the Division took place. That allowed Government Members, who showed no urgency in returning to the Room to re-embark upon our important deliberations, the opportunity to vote on the matter. The Opposition are also deeply disappointed to note the total absence, as usual, of the Liberal Democrats, with whose presence we would have had a much closer shave.

Nicholas Winterton: That is a valid point of order. I think that the Committee as a whole has learned a lesson from what has just occurred. However, I am obliged to take any point of order and to seek to ensure that I fully understand it. I also seek to represent the Committee's best interests, but as both the Minister and the Government Whip, the hon. Member for Eastwood (Mr. Murphy), persisted in raising points of order, they got two or three in by a whisker. In a way, seeking to be entirely objective, the Committee's best interests were served. It is important that a Bill such as this is taken through with proper scrutiny and, I hope, with the ready and proper co-operation of all members of the Committee.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Further to that point of order, Sir Nicholas, when I have tried to pose points of order in Committees—genuine or otherwise—once a Division has been called, those points of order have always been rejected by the Chair and the Question has always been put forthwith. That did not happen on this occasion, Sir Nicholas. Could you please clarify the correct procedure?

Nicholas Winterton: I was, as it were, at the point of putting the Question. I was caught by the Minister and the Government Whip, who wished to raise points of order. I understand the point made by the hon. Member for Cotswold (Mr. Clifton-Brown) in his normal courteous and appropriate way. The Chair seeks to appreciate points made by Opposition Members in Committee, but I believe that on this occasion, I acted correctly. As we proceed in Committee, that will become increasingly evident.

Philip Hammond: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas. We are now moving on from this incident, so this is a serious point of order. There was a close squeak for the Government, but we have lost the Minister's substantive reply on the amendment. I hope that you will take that in to account, Sir Nicholas, in deciding whether a stand part debate can be held on this clause.

Nicholas Winterton: I have already taken that into account, but to an extent, that may be influenced by the next amendment, although I doubt it.

Philip Hammond: I beg to move amendment No. 18, in
clause 3, page 3, line 28, leave out from 'authority' to end of line 29.
 This is a simple and probing amendment that deals with subsection (3)(f) and would give existing combined fire authorities a compulsory purchase power, which I understand they do not currently have. If my understanding of the current position is correct, that would be yet another substantial extension of powers for combined fire authorities, the rationale for which should be justified in detail. I appreciate that existing local authorities have compulsory purchase powers, but I understand that fire authorities created under the 1947 Act do not have such powers. This may appear to be an esoteric subject—one can think of examples that the Minister might use, for example, in relation to the need to acquire land for control rooms—but I am not personally convinced of the case for compulsory purchase. However, I am more concerned to explore the compulsory purchase powers in relation to the roll-out of the Firewave. [Hon. Members: ''Airwave.'']

Philip Hammond: Airwave.

Nick Raynsford: Firelink.

Philip Hammond: Firelink, the radio system that, I understand, may be based on the controversial Tetra technology.
Mr. Raynsford indicated dissent.

Philip Hammond: The Minister is shaking his head again, as he did when I said that on Second Reading. However, the next day I received a letter from O2, one of the bidders, confirming that they will put forward Tetra technology, and I was sent a brochure explaining why I should not be concerned about the use of such technology. I assume that the Minister is not short-circuiting a public procurement exercise by ruling out one of the bids.

Nick Raynsford: The reason why I shook my head both on Second Reading and today is that there is no requirement to adopt a particular technological approach. The hon. Gentleman is right to say that one of the bidders will propose the Tetra technology, but that is not an obligation of the procurement. I shook my head at the implication that that system would automatically be used.

Philip Hammond: That is fair enough and I understand that, but I did not seek to imply that. My point is that if the fire service, or the Government on its behalf, rolls out a new radiocommunications system that needs sites for masts, which are bound to be controversial and raise local hostility, the compulsory purchase powers bestowed on CFAs under subsection (3)(f) could become significant. I look forward to hearing an explanation from the Minister as to why the Government feel that a small group of newly created CFAs—we will call them section 2 CFAs—must have compulsory purchase powers.

Nick Raynsford: I am delighted on this occasion to have the opportunity to respond to the debate and will do so briefly. I hope that we might be able to cover ground in the clause stand part debate that we were not able to earlier.
 Amendment No. 18 would prevent the option of granting a newly created CFA the powers to buy and sell land that are already available to other fire and rescue authorities; for example, existing county and metropolitan fire authorities. The hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge was right that a group of CFAs, which are combined as a result of local government reorganisation, do not have that power and that is an anomalous position. 
 The powers available to different fire and rescue authorities are complex. Subsection (3)(f) deals with a present imbalance by allowing future CFAs to compulsorily acquire land. Not to do so would continue the current anomaly and create a perverse incentive to retain the status quo in cases where combination is a sensible way to proceed. Whereas clause 2(2)(b) powers are used to affect a combination to facilitate regional resilience, the availability of such powers might be necessary, for example, to acquire an appropriate site for a regional control room or other resilience facilities. 
 I hope that hon. Members will accept that it is prudent to ensure that the enabling powers are sufficient. The relevant statutory requirements that apply to the approval of compulsory purchase powers will be set out in individual combination scheme orders. We are not seeking to apply the powers under clause 3(3) retrospectively to existing CFAs, but we will consider requests in cases in which the absence of such powers is an obstacle to delivery. In the light of those comments, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will withdraw amendment No. 18.

Philip Hammond: The Minister's position is slightly inconsistent. If the Government assert that CFAs need compulsory purchase powers, the Bill is the perfect vehicle to give them those powers and provide the
 opportunity to argue and debate the issue. However, the Government have chosen not to do that, but to leave the large number of existing CFAs without those powers and to grant them only to newly created CFAs, including regional CFAs. That further reinforces the impression that the Government intend to move quickly toward a full regionalisation of the fire service and are not addressing the position of the section 4 CFAs because they do not envisage them being a long-term part of the scene.
 I remain unconvinced by the Minister's argument that, in the south-west region—with 23,000 sq km of land to choose from—the regional fire authority would require compulsory purchase powers to find the half-acre or so that it might need for its control room. That seems a slightly incredible proposition, and I am not sure that the Minister has made the case for compulsory purchase powers. He signally failed to address the issue of radio masts, which I focused on when I moved the amendment. Can he reassure the Committee that compulsory purchase powers will not be used to secure radio mast sites in a way that might frustrate landowners' attempts to prevent those things from being sited in certain areas?

Nick Raynsford: I thought that I had explained that we are at an early stage of procurement and that there has been no commitment to a particular type of technology. The hon. Gentleman's concerns, therefore, are premature. Obviously, any national procurement of that nature—designed to ensure that there is intercommunication between all fire authorities and other emergency authorities—requires a consistent roll-out across the country. It would be slightly odd if, to achieve those objectives, we were dependent on powers that were only granted to authorities that might be brought into existence in the future. I hope that it is clear that we will not be, and that the hon. Gentleman accepts that.

Philip Hammond: That fell quite a long way short of an assurance that the compulsory purchase powers will not be used to acquire sites for radio masts. Although I accept entirely that different technologies may be under consideration, I am not yet aware of a radio transmission technology that does not require masts or dishes of some description. Sites will be required for that, whether Tetra or otherwise.

Nick Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman's question was specifically about the Tetra system, and that was what I was responding to. I said that there is no commitment to that particular technology.

Philip Hammond: I hear what the Minister says, but I referred particularly to Tetra because there is currently a great deal of public controversy about that system. I understand that some Tetra masts that were erected for the police Airwave scheme in Sussex have been removed because of public pressure and the way in which the planning process works. Clearly, the Minister would be reluctant for that to happen to his fire service equivalent.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Will my hon. Friend press the Minister on this point? Railtrack, or its successor, has exactly the type of national scheme, through the Tetra masts, that is being pushed. Because Railtrack is a utility, its permitted development rights have been withdrawn, so it can erect those masts where and when it likes without any consultation or planning permission. Does my hon. Friend agree that it would be totally unacceptable for fire services to be given the same powers? Indeed, the Minister's Department is currently considering those exemptions.

Philip Hammond: My hon. Friend accurately focuses on an issue that is of great public concern. The Minister will have to be mindful of those concerns when he considers his national communications programme for the fire service, if the erection of new radio masts is required for such a service. In his response to my points—in which I pointed out that the existing CFAs do not have compulsory purchase powers—the Minister failed to explain why, if those powers are considered necessary, he has not taken the opportunity presented by the Bill to grant them to existing CFAs. I can only conclude that they are not intended to be a permanent or long-term part of the structure. Otherwise, he would give them the powers that he says newly created clause 2 CFAs will need to possess.

David Drew: Does the hon. Gentleman agree that we seem to be considering masts only when it comes to compulsory purchase, but that the issue is more generally applicable? The public sector should be willing and able to be transparent in all its dealings in that regard. If he is saying that, I have some sympathy, because too often what is expected of the private sector does not necessarily seem to be expected also of the public sector. I hope that he is saying that.

Philip Hammond: That is precisely what I am saying. I used the example of masts because there is such public controversy over that issue. My view is that compulsory purchase powers, generally speaking, should be used if the location requirements for a matter of public policy are not transferable; if something must be in a certain location. It clearly would be wrong to allow a landowner to hold the state or public authorities to ransom because he happened to own the piece of land where, for some critical defence or civil resilience reason, something had to be located.
 However, the Minister has not made the case—or certainly not a case that I have understood—that it is likely that the new CFAs will need to occupy specific pieces of land about which there is no choice and for which there is no competition, so that they cannot reasonably be expected to enter the market and acquire the land and buildings that they need and have to rely instead on compulsory purchase powers. That is of course appropriate if we are talking about defence or resilience and the piece of land in question is specified and there is no alternative. However, that will not be the case with regional control rooms, over the siting of which there will be considerable flexibility 
 and, in some regions such as the north-west, considerable controversy and debate between the leading contenders. I am quite confident in predicting that. 
 I heard what the Minister said and I do not propose to press the amendment to a Division. However, I shall talk to the existing CFAs and I hope that we might have an opportunity to return to the issue on Report. I should not like to encourage the Minister to go down the route of extending compulsory purchase powers to all CFAs, but he cannot have his cake and eat it. Either he can give us solid reasons for needing the powers or they are not needed and should not be given as an additional bit of icing on the cake to the newly created clause 2 CFAs. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment. 
 Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. 
 The Chairman: As I said earlier, because of the little local difficulty that occurred some minutes ago, I am perfectly happy to allow a brief debate on clause 3 stand part. 
 Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.

Nick Raynsford: I am grateful to you for making this opportunity available, Sir Nicholas. I will offer as a reciprocal thought my best wishes for Macclesfield Town football club to have a successful outing on Saturday. We have discussed this issue many times in the past in Committees, and I hope that the fortunes of our respective teams, both of which are sadly too near the bottom of the third division, will improve before we meet again.
 The clause sets out the financial and administrative matters that an order combining fire and rescue authorities must or may cover, including the appointment of members to the new authority. The clause largely follows the existing 1947 Act. Subsection (3)(a) allows the Secretary of State, if appropriate, to appoint a minority of authority members to provide wider experience, including the managerial expertise that may be required if combination is necessary to tackle the failure of existing authorities. 
 I am aware that the issue was controversial, and although the hon. Member for Runnymede and Weybridge did not want to provide me with an opportunity to respond to his allegations during the earlier debate, I am pleased to be able to explain why we believe that our response is right and proper. 
 It is right that we should be frank and open about the matter. During the debate on Second Reading, the Chairman of the Select Committee, my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Andrew Bennett) said openly and clearly that there was a problem with the hierarchy of local council activity, in which the fire service often plays second or, in some cases, third or fourth fiddle to much larger areas of expenditure such as social services and education. Many other hon. Members participating in that debate 
 indicated either by supporting his comments openly or simply through their body language that they shared his analysis. 
 We must honestly acknowledge that where action is necessary to tackle failing authorities through combination, it would be curious and counter-productive to restrict appointments to existing authority members. To ensure effective future operation, it may be necessary and desirable to import new skills. We are doing no more than applying the same logic that we apply to our own activities.

Philip Hammond: The Minister's position is surely illogical and inconsistent, because he could find himself in a situation in which, to appoint members to an existing CFA that he considered to be failing, he would have to recombine it under clause 2 and then appoint members to it. As with the point about compulsory purchase, he is not seeking the powers to appoint members to existing CFAs created under section 4 of the 1947 Act. Why not?

Nick Raynsford: The hon. Gentleman knows well that, in the intervention clauses, the Secretary of State has powers relating to failing authorities which mirror the Secretary of State's role in relation to failing local authorities under the comprehensive performance assessment framework. We will be able to debate that in due course.
 As we have made clear in earlier debates, however, if there was a failure to move on the resilience front to ensure effective regional co-operation, and the Secretary of State felt obliged to make a combination scheme to give effect to regional co-ordination on resilience matters, it would probably be appropriate for him to consider appointing people with the necessary expertise to ensure that the constituent authorities of the new combined authority had the expertise to perform in that area.

Philip Hammond: The Minister's position is still inconsistent. He says that further on in the Bill we will discover powers of intervention to deal with a failing authority which might cover the areas that I have raised. Why, then, does he not allow new CFAs to be created with a membership reflecting that of existing CFAs, giving them a chance to do their job properly, and relying on the powers that he has to intervene in the event of their failing, which he says are adequate for dealing with the existing CFAs?

Nick Raynsford: That is because we are envisaging circumstances in which it may be necessary to create new CFAs because of a failure to achieve effective regional co-ordination among existing authorities. The hon. Gentleman cannot be seriously suggesting that if the Secretary of State had to use those powers, because of the failure of the existing authorities to take those responsibilities seriously and to operate an effective regional management board, he should then simply allow those same authorities to fill all the places on the new combined authority, and that he should not have scope to bring in any additional expertise to plug
 the gaps, ensuring effective resilience planning and co-ordination with the other services. If that is what the hon. Gentleman is suggesting, I am sorry to say that he is not taking the issue of resilience seriously.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Can the Minister point to a single instance in which an existing fire authority either has not performed its functions properly or has failed voluntarily to co-ordinate with its neighbouring fire authority?

Nick Raynsford: We discussed that at considerable length in our earlier sitting. We pointed out that in the Government's view, it is necessary for certain issues, particularly resilience issues, to be handled regionally. We want to see voluntary bottom-up approaches from local authorities to achieve that result, and if the authorities fail to set up effective regional management boards, we will have to use the Secretary of State's powers. It is not acceptable that we should have a framework under which those serious responsibilities are not being properly discharged. That is the context: we do not intend to use the powers unless there has been a failure, but, as a sensible and prudent Government, we are making provision for that possibility, and I am surprised that the Opposition are so suspicious of our intentions.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: The Minister is creating the chimera of the resilience issue in order to create a new, unnecessary structure to resolve it. There has been no greater fire emergency than the fire at Windsor castle. Fire authorities from as far away as south Dorset backed each other up, and the whole operation worked perfectly. If an operation of that size can work so well, why do we need these new structures?

Nick Raynsford: I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not come to regret those words. We live in a world in which the risks are far greater than those posed by the fire at Windsor castle. If, in the event of a major terrorist incident, there is no effective resilience in the area involving all the appliances in the region, we will be criticised, rightly, for having failed to ensure proper advance planning to guard against such circumstances. That is what we are doing, and that is why we are taking the matter seriously. These are simply precautionary measures to enable the Secretary of State, performing his duties under the legislation, to satisfy himself that the fire and rescue services are properly equipped to cope with that range of circumstance.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: I assure the Minister that this is my last intervention. He talks about serious incidents. Regrettably, we have had serious terrorist incidents in the City of London and in Manchester, and serious plane crashes on the M1. All those incidents were dealt with very satisfactorily by voluntary co-operation between adjoining fire services. Why, if we have been able to deal with such incidents in the past, do we need to set up new structures?

Nick Raynsford: I am very sorry that the hon. Gentleman was not listening to my earlier comments. In the event of a major terrorist incident, we would be
 dealing with far more serious consequences than anything that we have previously had to deal with. I pay tribute to our emergency services—not just the fire services—for their great professionalism in responding to the threats that we have faced, whether through natural disaster or through terrorism. However, we cannot be complacent; we must plan according to the risk of events on a far larger scale than anything that we have had to face in the past. That is why we have insisted on a framework for regional resilience, and we have put it in place—it has been debated by the Standing Committee considering the Civil Contingencies Bill. We are clear about the importance of regional planning to enable the fire and rescue service to co-ordinate with other emergency services and deliver effective resilience against such eventualities.
 I stressed that, on Second Reading, the Chairman of the Select Committee highlighted problems about the calibre of some of the local authority representatives who form a number of the fire authorities, and his comments were endorsed by other hon. Members. I said that it would clearly be curious to depend on the same framework that has produced that not-altogether-satisfactory outcome if we were establishing a combined fire authority, possibly on a regional basis. We believe that it is necessary, in such circumstances, to consider bringing in additional expertise—that is, to apply the same logic that we apply to our own activities. 
 The Government accept that we do not have all the answers, and we have set up a number of new bodies to ensure that policy making for the fire and rescue service is informed by the views of experts in the field: practitioners through the practitioners forum, wider stakeholders through the business and community safety forum and other experts through the ministerial sounding board. We believe that new combined fire authorities may benefit from additional expertise, and it is in that spirit that clause 3(3) was framed. It allows the Secretary of State to make appointments to new combined fire and rescue authorities; it does so not to enhance central control, but to improve the delivery of a vital public service. In the same way—the Opposition Members appear to be curiously unaware of this—the relevant Secretary of State can make appointments that contribute very positively to other emergency services. Those powers will be used to bring wider experience and expertise into the authorities.

Philip Hammond: I assume that the Minister is talking about powers in relation to police authorities. Will he tell the Committee what percentage of members of a police authority could be appointed or directly influenced by the Secretary of State under the Local Government Act 1992?

Nick Raynsford: I was thinking about the appointment to ambulance trusts. My point is that there is a role for outside expertise in other emergency
 services. It seems slightly curious to deny that to, and to depend wholly on the contribution of elected councillors for, fire and rescue services.

Philip Hammond: We are now moving down a route that might allow the Minister to reassure the Committee somewhat. The Secretary of State has a role in appointments to police authorities, but it is a limited one. He produces a shortlist, or a long list, of local candidates, from the magistracy in particular. If the Minister has in mind an intrusion by the Secretary of State into the process of appointing local people or approving them for appointment by authorities, that may be viewed in a different light. What is envisaged by Opposition Members is a power to appoint the helpful man from Whitehall who will make it all right.

Nick Raynsford: Once again, the hon. Gentleman has jumped the gun, because I was just about to come on to the way in which the power would be exercised if we had reason to use it. We are quite clear that if these appointment powers are to be exercised, that will be done in an open, advertised way, in accordance with the provisions of the Commissioner for Public Appointments and the code of practice. Not only that, they will involve a numerical minority, and those involved will not be allowed to take part in voting on precepting. Only elected members will be able to make decisions on how resources are allocated, but they will do so with the benefit of expertise that they themselves may not possess.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Will the Minister give way?

Nick Raynsford: I will, but I am very conscious that time is moving on.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: Indeed, I understand that the Committee wishes to finish debating this clause by the close of play. Before he concludes, will the Minister say something about how local people will be consulted on the precept in clause 3(5) and how local authorities' property rights will be divided?

Nick Raynsford: I am afraid that the hon. Gentleman missed his opportunity at an earlier stage; we are now debating clause stand part debate, and I am simply bringing matters to a conclusion.
 Only elected members will be able to make decisions.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: On a point of order, Sir Nicholas? May the Minister ride roughshod in such a way? Surely the Opposition is fully entitled to question the him. If he refuses to answer, we shall simply prolong the debate so as not to deal with this clause today.

Nicholas Winterton: I am not sure that that is a relevant point for me. I repeat the observation that the Minister will have heard: the Committee is minded to try to dispose of the clause this evening. If, in the remainder of his remarks, the Minister can make reference to the intervention by the hon. Gentleman, I am sure that he will.

Philip Hammond: Further to that point of order, Sir Nicholas. My understanding is it that it is perfectly proper to raise in a stand part debate any issues that have not been covered by amendments already debated. Can you confirm that?

Nicholas Winterton: I can confirm that. That is why, a moment ago, I made the observation that I did.

Nick Raynsford: I was simply observing that the Opposition had chosen for opportunistic reasons to deny me an opportunity to respond to the earlier debate. If they had not, we would have had a much greater opportunity to deal with the matters concerned. However, we are running out of time and, given all the issues, I hope that the Committee will agree that the clause should stand part of the Bill.

Philip Hammond: The Minister has not reassured me entirely. The safeguard to which he refers in subsection (5), which concerns the issuing of a precept to an authority, is hollow. If the authority is determined to enter into commitments, the fact that the members appointed by the Secretary of State will merely be unable to vote on raising the resulting precept will not help matters. The money will have to be raised to meet the commitments into which the authority has entered.
 We have made significant progress in the debate. The Minister is now clearly on the record as saying that the existing combined fire authorities are inadequate and that he is not happy that they are performing—

Nick Raynsford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

Philip Hammond: In a minute. I can only ask why the Minister has not chosen to use the Bill as a vehicle for restructuring the membership of those combined fire authorities. It seems bizarre for the Secretary of State to appoint outside members to the few new ones that will be created and to ignore what he is telling us is a problem with the many existing ones.

Nick Raynsford: I remind the hon. Gentleman that I did not say the words that he has tried to put into my mouth: that the existing CFAs were inadequate. I referred to the carefully considered words of the Chairman of the Select Committee, on Second Reading, which highlighted some weaknesses in the existing structures which were widely acknowledged on both sides of the House, and I highlighted the particular circumstances in which it might be necessary to use the powers to create a new CFA. I argued wholly logically for a power to be made available to enable the Secretary of State to reinforce the expertise and skills of the new CFA.

Philip Hammond: I am grateful to the Minister for what he just said, but the thrust of the debate over the past 20 minutes or half an hour is that there is a perceived problem with the membership of the CFAs. That is the perception of the Chairman of the Select Committee and of Members of this House. [Interruption.] I would say, from the Minister's body language, that that is his perception as well.
 Our concern is that, without its being explicit, the ODPM's agenda has changed. I have said this before, and I make no apology for saying it again, but at some stage in the course of its close interaction with local fire authority employers during the dispute, the ODPM decided that it did not like them, that it was not satisfied with what they were doing and that it was going to centralise the process. We see clause 3 as a centralising measure that gives the Secretary of State significant powers that he did not otherwise have for a purpose that is not clear and does not require a more general solution. The Minister has put forward several arguments for the powers that he seeks to take, and those are arguments for a much more radical set of proposals than the ones that he has put before us. 
 Our concern is that the combination of clauses 2 and 3 provides an ability to create new CFAs based on the pattern of the Government's regionalised agenda and then pack them with people selected by the Secretary of State, not by local people. That removes still further the local democratic accountability of our fire and rescue services at the same time as Ministers are trying to tell us that the Bill is all about creating a community-based service. I shall have to urge my colleagues to vote against clause 3.

Geoffrey Clifton-Brown: We might be able to dispose of the clause if we can deal with matters expeditiously, but we will need some answers from the Minister. We do not want to hear the ill-tempered outbursts that we heard from him a few minutes ago. If we can get some answers as to how the council tax payers on whom a precept for the new category 2 authorities will be issued will have their rights protected, and if we are told how they will be consulted about the new precept, we might be able to deal with the matter more expeditiously. If we do not get those answers, we will need to examine subsection (3)(g) in detail, as well as issues such as the Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) Regulations 1981, valuations and outstanding liabilities. Many matters in the clause could be dealt with. Perhaps the Minister will now tell us clearly how the new combined precept is to be operated and how local council tax payers will be protected.
 Debate adjourned.—[Mr. Jim Murphy.] 
Adjourned accordingly at five minutes past Five o'clock till Thursday 12 February at twenty-five minutes past Nine o'clock.